Posts by dz-015

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Re: I'm Done

Don't tell me what I can and cannot quote. It's my comment, I'll do whatever I like. If you don't want it quoted, don't write it.

On iOS you have complete fine-grained control over what apps and system services can and can't access. On Android you don't, as demonstrated by this article. So it's not laughable at all, and you're wrong I'm afraid. But why let facts get in the way of your hissy fit.

Re: app permissions

Re: app permissions

"On a recent iPhone, can I get a list of what permissions each app has" - not only can you get a list, you have fine-grained control over precisely what tracking and other access you allow for every single app and every single system service. No doubt I'll now get downvoted by all the fandroids, furious that I've dared to point out that iOS is better for privacy than Android is.

Re: I'm Done

"Enough now with this bullshit of having to allow mobile apps to access my location or other things in order for me to use them" - since you have an iPhone (as opposed to an Android phone) you don't have to do that at all. Just spend a few minutes in your settings.

Re: Buwahahahaha!

"Apple is just as bad as Google" - fandroids, totally missing the point as usual. On iOS you have complete control over what tracks you and what doesn't. If you don't want something tracking you, just turn it off - this applies to all apps, all system services, everything.

Re: The view from High Wycombe

I was thinking about posting a comment, but I see that all of the sensible comments explaining clearly and reasonably why scientists prefer Macs are being heavily downvoted, so I think I'll just not bother.

Agreed. I went with a friend and we were both utterly flummoxed at the end, genuinely wondering if we had just watched the same film that's been receiving all these rave reviews. I'm genuinely disturbed by all these people who've been to see it more than once, as I was more than ready to leave after an hour. There's no plot and no character development, so it's impossible to care about going on. It's therefore a two-hour car chase which rapidly gets tiresome. It's the worst possible combination: a stupid film which takes itself terribly seriously. It's impossible to engage your brain whilst watching it, but also impossible to enjoy it as a bit of silly fun as you can with many B movies. Oh, and the script is a total embarrassment, utterly cringeworthy. The whole thing is boring, miserable and exhausting, and the fact that so many people seem to think this is a pinnacle of filmmaking seriously disturbs me.

Re: what a lot of people..

"Most people can only afford a PC, and it was running DOS or Windows, sorry. Without them, IT would have been a very expensive hobby for just a few wealth users."

Utter rubbish for various reasons. For one thing, IBM created the PC, not Microsoft; and if Microsoft hadn't bullied its way to rapid operating system dominance, OS/2 and all sorts of other operating systems such as BeOS then Linux could have flourished on the hardware.

Re: what a lot of people..

"Without Microsoft what would consumers be running instead? And with that answer, how easy would it be for my 60 year old mother to install a print driver, or a small business to setup an LDAP with group policy-esq effects? With Windows, this is possible without being an expert, and without dropping to CLI's - it's EASY to perform these tasks."

Without Microsoft throttling all other innovation in the industry, who knows what alternatives might have thrived? OS/2 could have become the standard. The Amiga might have been viewed as a more viable option and been bought by a company which really pushed it forward. Apple might have been pulled out of the doldrums more quickly and Mac OS/OS X could have become a much more viable option. BeOS could have become much more ubiquitous without Windows grinding it into the ground before it even got going. Any of these options would have been far superior to Windows. The point is that without Microsoft's monopoly, any or all of these systems could have come into common usage and competed properly with each other to push the quality of the user experience infinitely higher than it was with Windows.

By the way, if you think installing printer drivers on Windows is an easy task for the average 60-year-old, you're seriously deluded. The same task on OS X is usually a walk in the park for anyone of any age, however - even nowadays Microsoft haven't managed to catch up in such fundamental areas.

Re: what a lot of people..

"MS was a good thing for home computing"

That's the most ignorant and retarded thing I've read for quite some time.

The ubiquity of Windows' low-quality, backward interface lowered people's expectations of technology almost to the point of absurdity, and as a computing professional I find it a constant embarrassment that Windows gives people such a poor experience and that there's so little that can be done about it. Windows essentially acts as an ambassador for our industry, with many people having their first or only computing experiences with it, and that's a shameful state of affairs for any IT worker who takes pride in what they do and strives for higher standards.

The coming of iOS heralded a time in which Windows' monopolistic domination of people's computing experiences was coming to an end. With smartphones and tablets they realised they weren't tied to Windows any more, and the joy and amazement you see in people when they realise they have technology which they can enjoy using and which empowers them to use applications and the internet without getting in their way is truly a wonderful thing.

I strongly dislike Microsoft software, am still extremely disappointed by the way that Microsoft's poor technology and innovation-stifling set the computing industry back by 20 years, and am far from convinced that pouring the resulting ill-gained profits into a foundation of questionable motives and results somehow justifies all this; but if it had been Gates who died of cancer rather than Jobs, the last thing I'd do would be to jump into a comments page like this to slag him off. Reading through some of the comments and votes on this page, I can't help feeling utterly disgusted by some of the readers on this site.

Re: The 'Pink Pound'. Dollar, Euro, etc

"Not being a prick here" - false, but the issue of whether or not you're a prick is massively overshadowed by the concern over whether or not you're a human being, because if you are then it makes me feel ashamed to be a member of the same species.

"You're NOT buying the tunes from Apple, at best you're renting them."

It's no different with CDs. It's exactly the same regardless of the distribution medium. You can't own the music - the copyright holder owns it. You're just buying a licence to listen to it.

"Now repeat the experiment with music purchased from Apple"

Evidently this is something you haven't done yourself during the last few years, or you'd know that it works in exactly the same way as music obtained on CD. There's no DRM and you can do whatever you like with it, so long as you don't violate the licence you bought - just as with music purchased on CD.

Better to check your facts before posting. God only knows how this nonsense got so many upvotes.

In the startups I've been involved with in recent years, Windows doesn't even enter the conversation unless there's some specific application which requires it. Most developers use Macs on the desktop, some Linux; almost all of them are comfortable with the Linux instances on Amazon Web Services or similar cloud hosting provider which they're almost invariably using. So nobody would ever hear the words "we are moving our cloud from Windows to Linux", although if they did, in most cases I imagine such an utterance would bring joy rather than fear.

An entire universe of space and time in which to let the imagination run riot, and the big mystery turns out to be the same old villains invading the Earth again like they always do, with some unconvincing fantasy nonsense thrown in for good measure.

It's lucky for Moffat that most people seem to have very low expectations.

Re: The Register is becoming a bit of a killjoy

"This episode wasn't half bad" - no, it was whole bad.

I don't see what's wrong with analysing something shit in order to point out exactly why it's shit; or why it's actually necessary to tolerate shit when this programme could be so much better, if only it had some decent stories and scripts.

"The coffee machines at Microsoft will be taking a hammering from nervous workers"

Really? Since nervousness increases adrenalin production, and since caffeine also increases adrenalin production, wouldn't nervous workers want to reduce the unpleasant effects of too much adrenalin by drinking _less_ coffee rather than more?

No need to compromise on sound quality to get a straightforward modern setup. I have a pair of Epoz Aktimate Blues - hi-fi quality "active" speakers with built-in amp and DAC. My Mac mini connects straight to those via USB so I can play from Spotify, iTunes, etc. There's also the added benefit that I can fire audio straight at the speakers via Bluetooth from tablets, smartphones, etc., which is very convenient. A great-sounding system - simple, flexible, modern.

"If all companies use the cloud, then the pool of available talent to create new infrastructure-specialist companies will shrink – and that strikes us as a bad thing."

As far as the industry is concerned, that may well be true. As far as I personally am concerned, I'm a seasoned sysadmin currently getting plenty of business from AWS deployments and associated "devops" stuff because I stay up to date and ensure that my skill set remains dynamic. If there comes a point where the fashion changes back to physical hardware, I've a whole bunch of skills I can dust off and utilise in that area too. So whilst I feel a degree of concern about this particular issue, there are definitely pros as well as cons for those willing to keep up with the times and continually keep themselves educated and relevant.

Re: as one of those unicorns

"It is pretty depressing to see how much companies have wasted on cloud services, at any scale" etc.

Just because you've come across retarded companies making the wrong decisions and doing things stupidly, doesn't mean that running your infrastructure in the cloud is automatically wrong. It makes a lot of sense in a lot of situations for a lot of companies, especially smaller ones. When doing AWS deployments I've never experienced crazy costs like the ones you're talking about, and running in the cloud gives companies a lot more freedom and flexibility than they would have with physical hardware, minus all the hardware management hassle.

To be a professional sysadmin you need to drop your prejudices and choose the right tool for the job. Sometimes AWS or similar is the right tool, and sometimes it isn't.

I'm old enough to remember watching the original Battlestar Galactica when it was first shown, but I loved the remake. New does not necessarily mean worse. J.J. Abrams, on the other hand, _does_ mean worse in this case (and in most other cases where he's involved, in my opinion).

Re: I keep looking at these NAS devices

"I can see a lot of small offices with 3-10 staff working on email, excel and word-processing. They have no servers per se - laptops or desktops. Their website is probably hosted by a local web design company, and none of them are IT bods, but they want a central repository for shared files"

Nowadays I think they'd just use DropBox and get a fast fibre broadband connection.